Free will

2021 ◽  
pp. 252-281
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Proper Subset ◽  
Weak Emergence ◽  
Strong Emergence

Wilson considers whether free will is either Weakly or Strongly emergent. She starts by drawing on Bernstein and Wilson (2016) to present a framework for connecting positions on the problem of free will with positions on the problem of mental (higher-level) causation. Bernstein and Wilson argue that compatibilist accounts implement a ‘proper subset’ strategy relevantly similar to that implemented by nonreductive physicalists/Weak emergentists; here Wilson extends this result to establish that the compatibilist strategy entails satisfaction of the conditions in Weak emergence. Wilson then argues that libertarian accounts implement a ‘new power’ strategy entailing satisfaction of the conditions on Strong emergence. Wilson goes on to suggest that free will of the compatibilist/Weakly emergent variety is plausibly widespread, and to present a novel argument for taking some instances of seemingly free choice to be Strongly emergent.

Metaphysical Emergence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Ordinary Experience ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Base Level ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Weak Emergence ◽  
Special Sciences ◽  
Strong Emergence ◽  
Key Questions

The special sciences and ordinary experience present us with a world of macro-entities trees, birds, lakes, mountains, humans, houses, and sculptures, to name a few which materially depend on lower-level configurations, but which are also distinct from and distinctively efficacious as compared to these configurations. Such appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there actually any metaphysical emergence? In Metaphysical Emergence, Jessica Wilson provides clear, compelling, and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two and only two forms of metaphysical emergence making sense of the target cases: ‘Weak’ emergence, whereby a macro-entity or feature has a proper subset of the powers of its base-level configuration, and ‘Strong’ emergence, whereby a macro-entity or feature has a new power as compared to its base-level configuration. Weak emergence unifies and accommodates diverse accounts of realization (e.g., in terms of functional roles, constitutive mechanisms, and parthood) associated with varieties of nonreductive physicalism, whereas Strong emergence unifies and accommodates anti-physicalist views according to which there may be fundamentally novel features, forces, interactions, or laws at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending each form of emergence against various objections, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually either Weakly or Strongly metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that Strong emergence, while in most cases at best an open empirical possibility, is instantiated for the important case of free will.

scholarly journals Evil and Free Will: Contemporary Free-Will Defense and Classical Theism

2020 ◽  
Vol IV (4) ◽  
pp. 15-34
Author(s):  
Igor Gasparov
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Voluntary Consent ◽  
Virtuous Character ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Free Will Defense

The article considers contemporary free will defences, proposed by A. Plantinga, R. Swinburne, according to which the existence of a world in which there is free will is something more valuable than the existence of a world in which there is no free will. It is shown that contemporary forms of free will defences share with atheistic arguments from evil an anthropomorphic model of God, in which God is thought as an individual among other individuals, although endowed with attributes such as omniscience and omnipotence to an excellent degree. It has also been shown that another important point of similarity between contemporary free will defences and atheistic arguments from evil is that both attempt to assess what our world would be like if created by such an individual. In contrast to atheistic arguments from evil, contemporary free will defences argue that divine omnipotence and omniscience are subject to some greater restrictions, as usually assumed, especially due to God's desire to give some of his creations the ability of free choice, which logically implies the possibility and even necessity of the existence of evil. It is demonstrated that classical theism does not share the anthropomorphic model of deity typical for many contemporary philosophers of religion. Classical theism rejects both the anthropomorphic model of deity and the unaccountability of free will to God as the supreme good. On the contrary, it assumes that free decision was initially an opportunity for the voluntary consent of man which had an innate aspiration towards God as his supreme good. Nevertheless, due to the creation of man out of nothing, this consent could not be automatic but implied forming a virtuous character, and man's transition from a state in which he was able not to sin, to a state in which he would be not able to sin.

The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
Exodus Narrative

Albo focuses his exegetical interpretation on his conception of free choice in a unique reading of the Exodus narrative. In the biblical description of the plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians, it is written that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” so that he would not agree to allow the Israelites to leave his land. The literal meaning of the narrative implies that God restrained Pharaoh’s free will. Such an interpretation calls God’s justice into question, since Pharaoh is held morally responsible for his refusal to liberate the Israelites. In an effort to reconcile the seeming conflict, Albo creatively interprets this enigmatic narrative, concluding that God did not deprive Pharaoh of his free choice, but rather preserved his volitional will, thereby maintaining divine justice. By hardening Pharaoh’s heart, God gave Pharaoh the fortitude to withstand the pressures of the plagues and exercise free choice whether or not to liberate the Israelites.

scholarly journals Free Will with Afterthoughts: A Quasichemical Model

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea C. Levi
Keyword(s):  
Probability Distribution ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Freedom Of Choice ◽  
Quasichemical Model ◽  
Conditioning Factors ◽  
Crossing Point

A model of free will is proposed, appealing to the similarity with simple, two-body chemical reactions where the energy curves for the reagents and for the products cross. The system at the crossing point has a freedom of choice to perform the reaction or not. The Landau-Zener formula, corresponding to the opportunity of meeting twice the crossing point, is interpreted as free will with an afterthought and generalized to the cases when a subject thinks about a choice n times. If the probability distribution pn of afterthoughts is known, the probability of a final yes decision is given. The results are generalized to situations where a preference for or against a change exists or where the freedom is only partial, has to fight with conditioning factors, and possibly decreases with increasing instances of free choice.

scholarly journals La natura analogica del bene: radice metafísica della libertà della scelta in Tommaso d'Aquino

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Federica BERGAMINO
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Conception Of The Good

The paper aims to show how the act of free will in Thomas Aquinas is not exercised merely in the choice between good an evil, but consists more essentially in the free choice ofthe better. What plays the key role in the analysis is Thomas's metaphysical conception of the good and its relationship to the free subject. The special causality of the good -and more concretely, of the particular good- is noted, and then choice is examined in light of the analogical nature of the «better».

scholarly journals Caspar Langenhert on Free Choice, Causation, and the Rejection of Calvinism

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 219-233
Author(s):  
Michael Jaworzyn
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
The Catholic Church

Abstract This article provides an account of how Caspar Langenhert (1661–c. 1730) attempted to reconcile teaching a controversial “egoist” metaphysics in Paris with his reasons for rejecting Calvinism, leaving the Netherlands, and joining the Catholic Church. Langenhert had renounced Calvinism especially because he took the Calvinist account of free will to be philosophically, morally, and scripturally dubious. He preferred the notion of indifference in explaining freedom. That did not seem to accord well with his later work, the Novus Philosophus (1701–1702), whose supposedly “egoist” metaphysics appears to deny such freedom to creatures. Langenhert’s own defence would have been that there was no conflict here, because of the unusually strong distinction he drew between the domains of metaphysics and theology, but his attempts to sidestep his apparent unorthodoxy seem to have been unconvincing to the Parisian authorities, and Langenhert was required to cease teaching.

FREE WILL, ETHICS, AND HEALTH CARE

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-186
Author(s):  
R. J. H.
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
The Right ◽  
Fine Adjustment ◽  
Ethical View ◽  
Libertarian View

In a recent volume1 Arrow takes the libertarian view that individuals can and should make a free choice of whether and when they want to get medical care, when given all the information. Pellegrino comments on the limitations of this libertarian view: (1) We are not isolated individuals but social beings whose actions effect others as well as ourselves. (2) Society has now said that it will care for people when sick. But if they are sick because of what they willfully did then should society not provide care? For children it is difficult to argue that they should be punished for their parents' failings. (3) The sick person's ability to deal with "all" the facts is limited, especially so for children. Pellegrino advocates an ethical view of the right to medical care as well as a legal one. " . . . law is the coarse adjustment that guards against the grosser violations of human rights; ethics is the fine adjustment that sets a higher ideal than law can guarantee." It would seem that children should have the right to medical care.

Complex systems

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-190
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Conservation Law ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Game Of Life ◽  
Weak Emergence ◽  
Strong Emergence ◽  
New Criterion

Wilson considers whether complex systems are either Weakly or Strongly emergent. She first traces the demise of nonlinearity as criterial of Strong emergence, and offers a new criterion in terms of apparent violations of a conservation law. By these lights, the Strong emergence of complex systems remains a live but currently unmotivated possibility. Wilson then argues that while appeals to algorithmic incompressibility, dynamic self-organization, and universality do not establish the Weak emergence of complex systems, cases can be made that these or related features satisfy the conditions in the schema. Most promisingly, complex systems exhibiting universality have eliminated degrees of freedom (DOF), and so are Weakly emergent by lights of a DOF-based account; and other complex systems (gliders in the Game of Life; flocks of birds) may also be seen as Weakly emergent by these lights.

A New Disproof of the Compatibility of Foreknowledge and Free Choice

1974 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-318
Author(s):  
Douglas P. Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Present Discussion ◽  
Divine Omniscience

Old philosophical problems never die, but they can be reinterpreted. In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the problem of reconciling divine omniscience and human free will. Classical discussions of this problem concentrate on the nature of God and the concept of free will. The present discussion will focus attention on the concept of knowledge, drawing on developments in epistemology that resulted from the posing of a certain problem by Edmund Gettier in 1963.

scholarly journals Did Epicurus Discover the Free-Will Problem?

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-193
Author(s):  
Susanne Bobzien
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Decision Processes ◽  
The Universe

This chapter shows, through painstaking analysis of the extant texts (Epicurus, Lucretius, Diogenes Laertius, et al.), that there is no evidence that Epicurus dealt with the kind of free-will problem with which he is traditionally associated, i.e. that he discussed free choice or moral responsibility grounded on free choice, or that the ‘swerve’ was involved in decision processes. Rather, for Epicurus, actions are fully determined by the agent’s mental disposition at the outset of the action. Moral responsibility presupposes not free choice but that the person is unforced and causally responsible for the action. This requires the agent’s ability to influence causally, more specifically on the basis of their beliefs, the development of their behavioural dispositions. The ‘swerve’ was intended to explain the non-necessity of agency without undermining Epicurus’ atomistic explanation of the order in the universe, viz. by making the mental dispositions of adults non-necessary.

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