Reference, error, naturalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-112
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Better Than

This chapter reinforces the HPC natural-kind view about free will by considering its advantages over other approaches in more detail, including Manuel Vargas’s revisionist approach. It is argued that Vargas’s view founders on a dilemma, which the natural-kind view escapes: Either Vargas’s approach is non-descriptivist, like the natural-kind view, in which case it is not revisionist; or it is revisionist, in which case it is not clear how it is descriptivist. Moreover, this chapter argues that the natural-kind view serves Vargas’s purposes better than his own view does. Finally, the chapter compares the natural-kind view to standard compatibilist, libertarian, and hard-incompatibilist views. Among all of these views, it is argued that only the HPC view is sufficiently methodologically naturalistic in its approach.

scholarly journals God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evil ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense ◽  
Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

Aesthetic as genetic: The epistemological violence of gaydar research

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander T. Vasilovsky
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Nonverbal Cues ◽  
Sexual Citizenship ◽  
Craniofacial Structure ◽  
Political Ethic ◽  
Phenotypic Variations ◽  
Epistemological Violence ◽  
Better Than

In recent years, “gaydar” has come under increasing scientific scrutiny. Gaydar researchers have found that we can accurately judge sexual orientation at better than chance levels from various nonverbal cues. Why they could find what they did is typically chalked up to gender inverted phenotypic variations in craniofacial structure that distinguish homosexuals. This interpretation of gaydar data (the “hegemonic interpretation”) maintains a construction of homosexuality as both a “natural kind” and an “entitative” category. As a result, culturally and historically contingent markers of homosexuality are naturalized under the guise of gaydar. Of significant relevance to this article’s critique of gaydar research is that the hegemonic interpretation is presented as politically advantageous for LGB people by its authors, an undertheorized assumption that risks sanctioning an epistemological violence with unfortunate, demobilizing sociopolitical consequences. This critique is contextualized within current debates regarding intimate/sexual citizenship and advocates, instead, for a queer political ethic that considers such cultural erasure to be politically untenable.

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.

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.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Reference Conditions ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Human Behaviors

This chapter situates the natural-kind view defended in the book in relation to standard views about free will. Typically, standard approaches assume a broadly descriptivist theory of reference, according to which the concept of free will refers (and so free will exists and we act freely) just in case it is associated with presuppositions that are (mostly) satisfied by actual human behaviors. On the natural-kind view, by contrast, the presuppositions associated with the concept do not have to be satisfied in order for reference to succeed (or for free will to exist). According to the natural-kind view, moreover, even if people’s free-agency phenomenology influences the reference conditions of the concept, the phenomenology supports both the natural-kind view and compatibilism.

Is free-agency phenomenology accurate?

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-136
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Free Agency

This chapter argues that free-agency phenomenology might be accurate or veridical even if determinism is true, in which case it is compatibilist. Indeed, free-agency phenomenology might be veridical even if it has libertarian presentational content and assuming the truth of determinism. Compatibilists can concede, at least for argument’s sake, that free-agency phenomenology is in one sense libertarian. Yet they should insist that it is in another sense compatibilist. Consequently, even if libertarian descriptions of free-agency phenomenology are apt, there is still a sense in which this very phenomenology might be veridical, assuming determinism. This verdict undermines a motivation for libertarianism, since it removes any presumption in favor of libertarianism based on phenomenology. It also supports the natural-kind view about free will.

Preserving preservationism (about free will)

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Reference Conditions ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Conceptual Question

This chapter addresses the question of how phenomenology might influence the reference conditions of the concept of free will. For descriptivists about reference, if the presentational content of free-agency phenomenology is libertarian, then descriptively libertarian reference conditions for the concept might be inherited from the phenomenology. In that case, eliminativism about the concept and denialism about free will would be true, assuming determinism. However, Gregg Caruso has maintained that even on a non-descriptivist and apparently preservationist and realist approach to the conceptual question, such as the natural-kind view, if the phenomenology has libertarian presentational content, then eliminativism and denialism are also true, once we assume determinism. Relying on the view about free-agency phenomenology developed in Chapter 4, this chapter provides a non-descriptivist defense of both preservationism and realism about free will, against Caruso’s claims. The chapter also considers Shaun Nichols’s discretionist position about free will.

Free-agency experience and belief

2021 ◽  
pp. 157-188
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Free Agency ◽  
Content View

Accumulating evidence indicates that (1) people tend to presuppose indeterminism as required for free will, and (2) people’s free-agency experiences suggest that they have indeterministic free will. However, most deny that (3) people’s presupposition of indeterminism has its source in their experience. This chapter explains how (3) might be true. It does so by appeal to the phenomenon of prospection, which is the mental simulation of future possibilities for the purpose of guiding action. The resulting view fills in at least some of the details of the HPC natural-kind view defended in Chapters 2 and 3, and also some details of the dual-content view about free-agency phenomenology defended in Chapters 4 and 5. It also links this view about phenomenology to the natural-kind view.

Naturally free action

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-74
Author(s):  
Oisín Deery
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Homeostatic Property Clusters ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Existence Question ◽  
Compatibility Question

Adopting the alternative approach motivated in Chapter 1, this chapter argues that free will is a natural kind, by relying on the influential idea that natural kinds are homeostatic property clusters (HPCs). The resulting HPC natural-kind view about free will answers the existence question positively: free will exists and we act freely. Moreover, it does so without directly addressing the compatibility question, although the view favors compatibilism over libertarianism. The chapter also rebuts a prominent objection to natural-kind views about free will, including the HPC view. Finally, the HPC view builds on Andrew Sims’s recent view that agents are a natural kind and it yields an appealing alternative to standard approaches as well as to recent revisionist approaches to free will and moral responsibility.

Time and Latitude in South Africa

1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
J. Hers
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
Royal Observatory ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Astronomical Determination ◽  
Limited Accuracy ◽  
Better Than

In South Africa the modern outlook towards time may be said to have started in 1948. Both the two major observatories, The Royal Observatory in Cape Town and the Union Observatory (now known as the Republic Observatory) in Johannesburg had, of course, been involved in the astronomical determination of time almost from their inception, and the Johannesburg Observatory has been responsible for the official time of South Africa since 1908. However the pendulum clocks then in use could not be relied on to provide an accuracy better than about 1/10 second, which was of the same order as that of the astronomical observations. It is doubtful if much use was made of even this limited accuracy outside the two observatories, and although there may – occasionally have been a demand for more accurate time, it was certainly not voiced.

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