Irreducible Freedom in Nature

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-323
Author(s):  
Jennifer Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Natural Approach ◽  
Liberal Naturalism ◽  
Free Actions

AbstractI provide a novel response to scepticism concerning freedom and moral responsibility. This involves my extension to freedom of John McDowell's liberal natural approach to ethics and epistemology. I trace the source of the sceptical problem to an overly restrictive, brute conception of nature, where reality is equated with what figures, directly or indirectly, in natural scientific explanation. I challenge the all encompassing explanatory pretensions of restrictive naturalism, advocating a re-conception of nature such that it already incorporates reasons. This allows for an explanation of free actions which is not ultimately brute, but irreducibly normative. Against the backdrop of liberal naturalism I conceive freedom as an emergent capacity to respond to reasons which arises from the acquisition of language. I claim that freedom is a rational causal power to originate actions based within a naturalised ontology, which has sufficient depth to justify moral responsibility without begging ontological or epistemological questions.

scholarly journals Indirectly Free Actions, Libertarianism, and Resultant Moral Luck

Erkenntnis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. 1417-1436
Author(s):  
Robert J. Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Free Actions

Abstract Martin Luther affirms his theological position by saying “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Supposing that Luther’s claim is true, he lacks alternative possibilities at the moment of choice. Even so, many libertarians have the intuition that he is morally responsible for his action. One way to make sense of this intuition is to assert that Luther’s action is indirectly free, because his action inherits its freedom and moral responsibility from earlier actions when he had alternative possibilities and those earlier directly free actions formed him into the kind of person who must refrain from recanting. Surprisingly, libertarians have not developed a full account of indirectly free actions. I provide a more developed account. First, I explain the metaphysical nature of indirectly free actions such as Luther’s. Second, I examine the kind of metaphysical and epistemic connections that must occur between past directly free actions and the indirectly free action. Third, I argue that an attractive way to understand the kind of derivative moral responsibility at issue involves affirming the existence of resultant moral luck.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Neil Levy ◽  
Shed Light

This concluding chapter summarizes the central claims of the book. Additionally, it argues that the HPC natural-kind view about free actions has the resources to address various empirical threats to free will. For example, Neil Levy has argued that recent findings about how implicit biases affect actions threatens free will and moral responsibility. However, the natural-kind view defuses this threat, including Levy’s version of it. The chapter also shows how the natural-kind view can shed light on emerging questions about whether artificially intelligent agents might ever act freely or be responsible for their actions, and if so in what sense. Finally, the chapter sketches some findings indicating that folk thinking may actually assume something like the natural-kind view.

The Freedom of God and Human Freedom

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-180
Author(s):  
Axel D. Steuer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Images Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Our peculiar dignity as persons seems to rest on our freedom of action, since freedom of action is required to make sense both out of moral responsibility and out of the God—man relationship. Indeed, the possession of freedom seems to be a (if not the) major justification for claims that humans are in an important way images of God. Furthermore, the most promising theodicies all ascribe a good portion of the evil experienced in the world to the free actions of human beings.

Naturally Free Action

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Intelligent Agent ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Compatibility Question

Do we have free will? This book argues that the answer to that question is “yes,” by showing how the concept of free will refers to many actual behaviors, and how free actions are a natural kind. Additionally, the book addresses the role of phenomenology in fixing the reference of the concept, and argues that free-agency phenomenology is typically accurate, even if determinism is true. The result is a realist, naturalistic framework for theorizing about free will, according to which free will exists and we act freely. For the most part, this verdict is reached independently of addressing the compatibility question, which asks whether free will is compatible with determinism. Even so, the book weighs in on that question, arguing that the natural-kind view both supports compatibilism and provides compatibilists with an attractive way to be realists about free will. The resulting position is preferable to previous natural-kind accounts as well as to revisionist accounts of free will and moral responsibility. Finally, the view defuses recent empirical threats to free will and is able to address emerging questions about whether an artificially intelligent agent might ever act freely or be responsible for its behaviors.

Beyond metaphors and semantics: A framework for causal inference in neuroscience

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto A. Gulli
Keyword(s):  
Causal Inference ◽  
Causal Power

Abstract The long-enduring coding metaphor is deemed problematic because it imbues correlational evidence with causal power. In neuroscience, most research is correlational or conditionally correlational; this research, in aggregate, informs causal inference. Rather than prescribing semantics used in correlational studies, it would be useful for neuroscientists to focus on a constructive syntax to guide principled causal inference.

Test Validation Without Measurement

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Lacot ◽  
Mohammad H. Afzali ◽  
Stéphane Vautier
Keyword(s):  
Test Data ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Test Validation ◽  
Clinical Tests ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
Power Of Test ◽  
Memory Accuracy ◽  
Social Uses ◽  
Special Case

Abstract. Test validation based on usual statistical analyses is paradoxical, as, from a falsificationist perspective, they do not test that test data are ordinal measurements, and, from the ethical perspective, they do not justify the use of test scores. This paper (i) proposes some basic definitions, where measurement is a special case of scientific explanation; starting from the examples of memory accuracy and suicidality as scored by two widely used clinical tests/questionnaires. Moreover, it shows (ii) how to elicit the logic of the observable test events underlying the test scores, and (iii) how the measurability of the target theoretical quantities – memory accuracy and suicidality – can and should be tested at the respondent scale as opposed to the scale of aggregates of respondents. (iv) Criterion-related validity is revisited to stress that invoking the explanative power of test data should draw attention on counterexamples instead of statistical summarization. (v) Finally, it is argued that the justification of the use of test scores in specific settings should be part of the test validation task, because, as tests specialists, psychologists are responsible for proposing their tests for social uses.

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