Lecture 8 Metaphysics Part III

Question 1

What are the 2 main questions in the debate around free will?

Answer 1

Q1. Is Determinism compatible with free will?

Q2. Is the thesis of Determinism true?

Question 2

What are the 3 main positions in the free will debate?

Answer 2

1. Hard Determinism
2. Libertarianism
3. Compatibilism

Question 3

What do Hard Determinists and Libertarians agree on?

Answer 3

Hard Determinists and Libertarians say ‘No’ to Q1. Both agree that free will is incompatible with the truth of Determinism.

Question 4

How does this differ with Compatibilists?

Answer 4

say ‘Yes’ to Q1. They believe that free will is compatible with Determinism (hence the name).

Question 5

What do Hard Determinists and Libertarians disagree on?

Answer 5

Hard Determinists and Libertarians disagree on the answer to Q2. Hard Determinists say ‘Yes’ to Q2
Libertarians say ‘No’ to Q2

Question 6

What is the master argument for Hard Determinism?

Answer 6

P1. If Determinism is true, then we don’t have free will.
P2. Determinism is true.
Conc. Therefore, we do not have free will.

Question 7

What is the master argument for Libertarianism?

Answer 7

P1. If Determinism is true, then we don’t have free will.
P2. We do have free will.
Conc. Therefore, Determinism is false.

Question 8

What is Causal Determinism?

Answer 8

1. Every event has a cause
2. The cause of an event is sufficient for that event to occur, and no other event. This is a universal metaphysical principle meant to apply to every event in the universe, including the our decisions to act.

Question 9

What is Determinism (general)?

Answer 9

The thesis that every event that occurs in the natural, physical world is/was necessitated by prior events, initial conditions and the laws of nature.

Question 10

What is Physicalism?

Answer 10

The thesis that human beings are part of the natural, physical world, so our decisions to act are physical events.

Question 11

What is the argument from Determinism?

Answer 11

P1. We have free will only if we are in control of our decisions to act.
P2. We are not in control of our decisions to act.
P3. Therefore we do not have free will.

Question 12

What are reasons for acting?

Answer 12

why someone acts. This can be taken as either a purely

causal/mechanistic claim, or as a claim about exercises of rationality in decision making, - or both.

Question 13

What is Agent Causation?

Answer 13

The thesis that humans are free agents that can cause themselves to choose to act as well as not to act.
This claim attributes a distinctive causal power to humans as free agents - one that has no pre-determining causes itself.

Question 14

What is Dualism?

Answer 14

Dualism: the mind and the body are metaphysically distinct entities, governed by distinct laws. Dualists deny that Physicalism is true. (Descartes was a prominent dualist)

Question 15

Whose quote is this? ““I grant, then, that an effect uncaused is a contradiction, and that an event uncaused is an absurdity. The question that remains is whether a volition, undetermined by motives, is an event uncaused. This I deny. The cause of the volition is the man that willed it.”

Answer 15

Thomas Reid on Agent Causation (1793)

Question 16

Whose quote is this? “Suppose you set off for a shop on the evening of a national holiday, intending to buy a cake with your last ten pound note. On the steps of the
shop someone is shaking an Oxfam tin. You stop, and it seems completely clear to you that it is entirely up to you what you do next. That is, it seems to you that you are truly, radically free to choose, in such a way that you will be ultimately morally responsible for whatever you do choose. Even if you believe that determinism is true, and that you will in five minutes time be able to look back and say that what you did was determined, this does not seem to undermine your sense of the absoluteness and inescapability of your freedom, and of your moral responsibility for your choice. The same
seems to be true even if you accept the validity of the Basic Argument… which concludes that one cannot be in any way ultimately responsible for the way one is and decides. In both cases, it remains true that as one
stands there, one’s freedom and true moral responsibility seem obvious and absolute to one.”

Answer 16

Strawson on the “sense” of Freedom

Question 17

What is Strawson’s basic argument?

Answer 17

P1. Nothing can be a causa sui - nothing can be the cause of itself.
P2. In order to be truly morally responsible for one’s actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental respects.
P3. Therefore nothing can be truly morally responsible.

Question 18

What is Hard Incompatibalism?

Answer 18

Hard Incompatibilists believe that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with Determinism and Indeterminism.

Question 19

Argument from Hard Determinism

Answer 19

P1. Either Determinism is true, or it is false.
P2. If Determinism is true, then we have no free will and cannot be morally responsible.
P3. If Determinism is false (= Indeterminism is true), then we have no free will and cannot be morally responsible.
Conc. Therefore, whether Determinism is true or false,
we have no free will and cannot be morally responsible.

Question 20

What is Indeterminism?

Answer 20

The claim that there are some events in the universe which are indeterministic - meaning they are genuinely random or stochastic in nature.
It’s important to note here that ‘indeterministic’ does not necessarily mean ‘uncaused.
Indeterminism holds that there are some mechanisms or processes at work in the universe that will not follow the ‘clock-work’ recipe that the general thesis of Determinism describes. This means there are some processes or sequences of events which would not have the same outcome even if held prior conditions and the laws of nature fixed.